


the girl and the demon

by chadsuke



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Gen, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-05-29 14:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15075134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chadsuke/pseuds/chadsuke
Summary: Kagome's natural instinct when reborn into a new world is, of course, to befriend the nearest demon.





	1. Chapter 1

She’s seven years old when it happens.

Sitting on a bench in the market with a small bowl of take-out curry, the little girl is content to sit and much and people watch. There’s _lots_ to see. Shinobi leap from rooftop to rooftop, speedy and out of the way. Civilians take the path well-trodden, talking and walking seemingly without a care in the world.

So many scenes, so many people. A genin team bickers overhead as they pass through. A pair of twins beg their father for some candy. A woman gives her wife a kiss on the cheek and heads into a store.

One scene in particular, though, catches the little girl’s eye.

At first glance, it seems normal. A little boy with blonde hair, probably around her age, maybe a little younger, steps up to peek at a stall filled with toys. The only thing worth of note is that he’s alone – but then again, so is she. The shopkeeper turns to greet, automatic, but when he catches sight of the boy, his entire face warps. Twists. “Hey! This shop isn’t for you, demon!” he yells, and he _shoves_ the little child.

The blonde goes down hard in the dirt, but no one runs to his aid. Adults stare with barely hidden hate and fear. Children stare in confusion.

He gets up and glares, tears rising in his eyes. “I didn’t wanna buy from a mean ol’ geezer like ya anyway!” the boy yells, and then he runs away. Flees as fast as he can from the scene of the crime.

It takes a minute or two of awkward tension, but the market returns to life, bussing along as though absolutely nothing has happened.

“A demon, huh?” Higurashi Kagome says, and takes another bite of curry.

* * *

Naruto is determined to not leave this swing. Ever. He doesn’t care that it’s getting dark out, that it’s getting kinda cold, that he’s the only one left in the park. All he wanted was to look at the toys, and that man – he acted like Naruto was gonna steal one or something! He’s never stolen something, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t _ever-_

“Hey!”

The blonde _jumps_ in his seat, quickly glancing up, and it seems he’s not alone in the park anymore. There’s a little girl here, around his age, maybe a little older, walking towards him. With long black hair and a pretty green dress, she looks _awfully_ familiar, but he can’t place her.

She sits on the swing next to him, and he gapes at her. “Hello,” the girl greets. “Are you really a demon?” That question does all sorts of funny things to his tummy, makes him feel _sick,_ and he thinks she can tell because she starts talking again. “It’s okay if you are,” she says. “My best friend’s a half demon.”

That stops Naruto’s tummy problems in their tracks. “How can somebody be a _half_ demon?” he blurts, and flushes when she giggles.

“His Papa was a dog demon and his Mama was a human,” the girl says, as if that explains everything, and Naruto _guesses_ it does. But he didn’t know there were such things as _dog_ demons…

“So?” she asks, and Naruto stares at her blankly. “ _Are_ you a demon?”

For the first time in his life, Naruto _hopes_ that everyone’s right about him. Cause this girl seems to like demons, and maybe if he is a demon, she’ll be his friend. But because Naruto can’t even do this **one thing** right, he stares down at his feet. “Dunno,” the boy mumbles. “I dunno my parents.”

He squints up sideways at her, kinda hopeful. “Do I look like a demon?”

She takes his question very seriously. “Straighten up,” the girl tells him, and Naruto snaps to attention. She gets out of her swing and walks around him once, twice, three times, looking him up and down, before she plops back in her own swing.

“No, she says, and Naruto droops. “You don’t like a demon. But… maybe you’re _half._ ”

That perks Naruto right back up, and he grins at her. “Really, really? You think I’m half? That my Mom or Dad was a demon?”

The girl grins back. “Yes,” she tells him, nodding. You feel like a demon _and_ like a human, and those marks on your cheeks kinda look like whiskers.”

He’s thought so before, too, staring in the mirror, but hearing it from someone else is really cool. “You can feel stuff like that?”

She hmms. “Yes. It’s something special I can do.”

Naruto considers this with utmost gravity. “Like the one family with the weird eyes?”

“Just like them.”

“ _Cool,_ ” the blonde says, grinning. “Hey, hey, what’s your name? I’m Uzumaki Naruto, yeah!”

“Higurashi Kagome,” she says, and she offers him a hand.

He stares at it for a moment, surprised, before he clumsily reaches out to grab her hand and shake. Kagome’s hand is soft, and Naruto’s face darkens as he wonders, briefly, if that’s what _all_ girls’ hands feel like. Realizing he’s holding on a little too long, the blonde quickly yanks his hand away, glancing away in flustered embarrassment. “S-So, um, d’ya wanna be friends?” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he cringes. That sounded really uncool and boring and bad and-

“Okay.” Naruto jerks his head to stare at her; Kagome is smiling. “Half-demons make the _best_ kind of friends.”

His heart swells. Every day of being alone of people hating him and calling him names and no one playing with him – it’s all worth it for this. He knows why they hate him but Kagome wants to be his friend _because_ he’s a demon.

(He’s going to be the best half-demon friend ever.)

Kagome gets up, stretching, and then offers him a hand up. “Come on, Naruto,” she says. “We should get going. It’s late, and you should be in bed.”

He takes the hand, kind of awed that she doesn’t let go and keeps holding on. “Yeah, yeah.” Naruto doesn’t let go, either. “Will I… see ya tomorrow?”

She smiles. “I’ll find you. Promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took down my non-Naruto WIP fics, since I'm not liable to work on those any time soon, so here you are! I've had this first chapter done for... months, now.
> 
> This Kagome is interesting to write, because she's had seven years in the Naruto world on top of her character development/maturing in Inuyasha. So it's fun!


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a knock on his door and Naruto falls out of bed.

He stares at the ceiling for a moment, still half-dreaming about Iruka crowning him the Kage of Ramen, when there’s another knock. Oh. That. That wasn’t part of his dream.

Naruto drags himself to his feet, yawning and rubbing at his eyes, and opens the door.

It’s-

It’s the girl from last night, Kagome, the one who said that he was a half-demon and that they were friends and-

He’s very awake, all of a sudden, and conscious of the fact that he’s still in his pajamas and his apartment is so very messy. Kagome looks put together, wearing the same green dress from the day before, her dark hair carefully brushed and falling just below her chin. “Good morning, Naruto,” she says, and she smiles, all dimples and cuteness and Naruto flushes.

“G-Good morning!” he says, and he steps aside to let her in, let her look around the tiny apartment with curiosity. “You- You came?”

She turns to look at him, and there’s a soft, sad sort of understanding in her eyes. “I did. I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

Naruto’s not used to that.

He’s not used to an easy promise that’s actually fulfilled, to someone saying they’ll do something and actually doing it, to someone coming over to his apartment and smiling at him. Only the Hokage has ever been in his apartment, and the Old Man doesn’t smile too much. “Y-Yeah, you did…” he mumbles.

Naruto shuts the door behind her. She sets her backpack on the table, the table that still has his empty ramen container from yesterday, and he hustles to pick it up and throw it away. Kagome shakes her head and mutters something about “Really? Is it just a demon thing?” but she’s quiet enough that Naruto would feel weird asking her.

“Did you eat already?” she asks, gesturing to the trash where he just threw away his ramen, and Naruto shakes his head.

“Um, I just woke up.”

She stares at him. “Naruto, it’s like, ten.”

“I- Uh-“ He’s so miserably embarrassed. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

And he’s not lying. He was so enthralled by the fact that he’s a demon, that he’s got a friend, everything that happened in that very short exchange from last night, that his head kept going and going and he couldn’t settle down to sleep.

Kagome just _looks_ at him for a moment, before she shakes her head. “That’s fine. I’ll make breakfast, okay? And we can talk.”

Naruto blinks twice at her, surprised. “Talk about what?”

“Don’t you have questions for me? I thought you would. Ask me anything.” Oh. Yeah. Kagome’s right, Naruto does have a lot of questions, and he sits down at the table and thinks about what he should say.

She bustles around as if this is her own kitchen. She pulls a half-empty carton of eggs out – Naruto got them cheap cause some were broken – a block of moldy cheese, and some butter that Naruto remembers buying for some day-old bread he already finished. She’s cutting off the green part when Naruto decides what question he wants to ask first.

“You said you’ve got a best friend who’s a half-demon. Who’s he?” If there’s another half-demon in Konoha, Naruto wants to meet him, very very much.

Kagome looks… sad for a moment, as she starts slicing up the good cheese into little pieces. “His name is Inuyasha,” she tells him. “He doesn’t live in Konoha.”

The idea of someone existing outside of Konoha, that Kagome KNOWS, is a marvel to Naruto, and it takes him a second to process that. “Where does he live?” he asks. “How’d you meet him? What’s he like?”

Kagome sets the pieces of cheese aside and turns to start digging some sort of pan out of the cupboard. She finds a comically oversized one, one that’s sooo big and has a dent in the middle, but she takes it out anyway and starts rubbing the butter all over the inside of it. “That’s a hard question to answer,” she says.

“Naruto,” she says. “Do you know what reincarnation is?”

Naruto does not. He frowns. “Re-in-what?”

“Reincarnation.”

And Kagome tells him.

She tells him about how once upon a time, she didn’t live in Konoha. She lived in a place with no ninja villages, no chakra, no jutsu – she was a girl named Kagome who fell through a well and landed in the past. "I was pretty confused,” she admits as she cracks all the eggs above the pan. Kagome tells Naruto about how she met Inuyasha, about a magical _jewel_ that made people stronger, about how there was an evil demon who wanted it and about how it got shattered into a million billion pieces.

“That was my bad,” she admits with a shrug as she adds the cheese and stirs. “We found all the shards, and we fought Naraku, and we won.” Kagome smiles, a tiny little smile. “I married Inuyasha. I love him. And now… I’m here.”

Naruto didn’t follow. “Now you’re here?”

Kagome pulls two chipped bowls out of the cupboard and starts to scoop eggs into them. “I don’t remember. I went to bed one night, next to Inuyasha… and when I woke up, I was being born.”

“Gross,” says Naruto. She nods.

“I don’t know where he is… Maybe I died in my sleep, and that’s how I’m here. Maybe I’m the only one. Maybe this is all fake, an illusion… Or maybe I’m just crazy…”

She looks off at the wall, and Naruto gets kinda scared. He shoves up from the table and stands next to her and even reaches out and takes the spoon from her hand to scoop the rest of the eggs into the second bowl. “I… I dunno ‘bout all that stuff, Kagome.” He shakes his head, and takes out the carefully-washed plastic forks he has in his drawer, offering one to her. She takes it.

He sits down at the table and shakes his head. “I dunno ‘bout demons and jewels and Narakus and all that stuff. But this place is real cause I know _I’m_ real, and I don’t think you’re crazy.” He stops. Pauses. “An’ even if ya are, you’re the _nicest_ person I’ve ever met, so there!”

Kagome smiles, a little tearfully. “Thank you, Naruto.”

Naruto smiles back, cause he guesses he says the right thing, and he takes a bite.

It’s the best food he’s ever, ever had. Even better than ramen.

* * *

“So,” Kagome says after they’re done, while she washes the dishes. “You live here alone?”

Naruto shrugs. “Yeah. Old Man Hokage gives me money to pay for food and stuff.” He waffles for a moment, not sure if he’s allowed to ask, staring down at the wooden grains that are the table, before he asks. “Do you got… parents and stuff?” Kagome had said, before, how she had a mom and a grandpa and a little brother, but that was _before._

Kagome shakes her head. “No. I live at the orphanage.”

Oh. They’re both orphans, then. They’re quiet for a second, just the clink of dishes and running water, before Kagome speaks again. “You shouldn’t be living on your own.”

Naruto looks up at her, surprised. “What?”

“How old are you?”

“Oh, uh- I’m five, I think. I’m gonna start the Academy soon, and you gotta be five for that, so I’m five or real close to it.”

Kagome shakes her head again. “Five year olds shouldn’t live alone… You need an adult to take care of you.”

Naruto makes a face. “All the grown-ups are mean.”

Her hands still, and she looks at him again, sad and understanding and Naruto thinks that Kagome really _gets_ what it is to be a demon around people, and he wonders if she doesn’t like people much. “I’m a grown-up.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re not a real grown-up, Kagome, and you like demons. You don’t count!”

“Still,” she looks away, back at the sink, and her scrubbing grows a little harder, a little more insistent. “I can take care of you. I like you. I can stay with you and make sure you have food and-“

Kagome cuts off, and Naruto stares at her. “You…” He swallows, very harshly. “You want to?”

She turns to look at him, and Naruto realizes that she must have been just as lonely all this time. She nods, and Naruto throws himself up out of the chair, throws himself at her and wraps his arms around her in a big, big hug and she does the same without a moment of hesitation, squeezes him tight as he buries his face in her shoulder.

They stand like that, heedless of the running water in the background, before Naruto pulls back, smiling up at her with tears in his eyes. It shouldn’t be this easy, part of him thinks, but it isn’t every day you meet someone who wants to be friends with demons.

“You can be my Kagome-nee,” he says, and she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is soft. it's really fun to write.


End file.
